Rotten Tomatoes Bestows Top Golden Tomato Awards to 'Up' and 'The Hurt Locker'

LOS ANGELES, Jan. 12 /PRNewswire/ -- Rotten Tomatoes (www.rottentomatoes.com), the leading online aggregator of film reviews, today announced the 11th annual Golden Tomato Awards (http://www.rottentomatoes.com/guides/rtawards/), which pay tribute to the best and worst reviewed films of the past year.  Films are ranked according to their "Tomatometer" scores, which are based on the published opinions of more than 200 top film critics as aggregated by Rotten Tomatoes.

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Pixar's "Up" takes home the Golden Tomato Award for Best Reviewed Wide Release Film of the Year -- the studio's sixth Wide Release win. The action-packed war epic "The Hurt Locker" won the Award for Best Reviewed Limited Release Film of the Year.  

The worst-reviewed film of 2009 and recipient of the Moldy Tomato Award is video game-adaptation "Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li."

2009 Golden Tomato Award Winners

• Wide Release: "Up" – 98% Tomatometer score
• Limited Release: "The Hurt Locker" – 97% Tomatometer score

2009 Moldy Tomato Award Recipient

• Worst Reviewed Film: "Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li" – 4% Tomatometer score

2009 Category-Specific Golden Tomato Award Winners

• Action / Adventure: "The Hurt Locker"
• Animation: "Up"
• Comedy: "In the Loop"
• Documentary: "Anvil! The Story of Anvil"
• Drama: "An Education"
• Foreign: "Afghan Star" (Afghanistan)
• Horror: "Drag Me to Hell"
• Kids / Family: "Where the Wild Things Are"
• Musical: "Crazy Heart"
• Romance: "Adventureland"
• Sci-Fi / Fantasy: "Star Trek"
• Thriller: "State of Play"
• Best Reviewed Australian Film: "Samson and Delilah"
• Best Reviewed UK Film: "An Education"
• Best User Reviewed Film: "Zombieland"

Golden Tomato Awards Fast Facts

• Pixar continues to dominate as the most-honored studio:
  • Pixar has won Wide Release Film of the Year six times -- more than any other studio.
  • Pixar has earned the most Golden Tomato Awards (16 total)
• "Up" marks the eighth time an animated movie has won Best Wide Release ("Wall-E," "Ratatouille," "Wallace & Gromit: the Curse of the Were Rabbit," "The Incredibles," "Finding Nemo," "Chicken Run," "Toy Story 2")
• "Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li" is the second movie based on a video game to take the Moldy "award"
• By winning the SciFi category, "Star Trek" prevented "Harry Potter" from becoming the most decorated franchise in Golden Tomato Award history (tied with "Lord of the Rings" with three wins) in terms of category wins
• Since 2001, the Golden Tomato Award winner of the Animated Category has won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature six times
• Since 2000, every Best Picture Oscar™ winner has appeared on the Golden Tomato Awards as either a winner or nominee
• Since 2000, the Sci-Fi/Fantasy category has been largely dominated by franchises, with "Harry Potter," "The Lord of the Rings," "Hellboy," "Star Trek" and "X-Men" movies accounting for all but one of the category's awards ("Children of Men" won in 2006)
• "The Hurt Locker's" win in the Action/Adventure category stops a five year streak of major franchise action hero movies ("The Dark Knight," "The Bourne Ultimatum," "Casino Royale," "Batman Begins," "Spider-Man 2")
• "An Education's" win as both Best Reviewed UK movie and Best Reviewed Drama marks the second time in three years that a UK category winner has also won another category (2008's "Man on Wire" won both Best Reviewed UK film and Best Reviewed Limited Release)

Rotten Tomatoes (www.rottentomatoes.com) is the ultimate online movie destination offering the most comprehensive guide to movies.  Rotten Tomatoes' Tomatometer™ -- based on the published opinions of hundreds of film critics -- is a trusted measurement of movie quality for millions of moviegoers.  Rotten Tomatoes was acquired by Flixster Inc., the Web's largest community for movie fans, in January 2009.

Award Recipients Respond

"Thank you so much for honoring 'The Hurt Locker' with two Golden Tomato Awards. I'm grateful for your support of the film and am delighted that you have deemed it 'fresh.'" – Kathryn Bigelow, director and producer, "The Hurt Locker"

"On behalf of the entire Pixar creative team, I wanted to thank both the fans and the critics community for honoring 'Up' with such an unprecedented honor." – Pete Docter, writer and director, "Up"

"The cast, crew, and myself are honored to receive this award." – Sam Raimi, writer and director, "Drag Me To Hell"

ABOUT FLIXSTER INC.  

Based in San Francisco, Flixster Inc. is the producer of the world's biggest online movie community, and also operates the popular Rotten Tomatoes website, which is the web's leading aggregator of critical movie reviews. Flixster's "Movies" app is installed on more than 20 percent of iPhones in the U.S., and its apps are also available for the Blackberry, Palm Pre and for Android-powered devices.  Together, Flixster and Rotten Tomatoes offer a database of more than 250,000 movies; 2.3 billion user reviews; 500,000 critic reviews; more than 20,000 trailers and videos; the well-known Tomatometer™ and Flixster Scores; unique movie news and editorial content; category-leading social-networking features; localized movie showtime information; theater maps; and online ticketing.

SOURCE Rotten Tomatoes